A car bomb blamed on the armed Basque separatist group ETA exploded in a busy Madrid street early today, slightly hurting a government official believed to be its target and injuring 98 others, four of them seriously.
The blast - the latest in a string of attacks in the Spanish capital - ripped through a residential neighbourhood at about 9.10 a.m. local time, wounding a three-year-old girl and her mother with flying metal shards and destroying parked cars.
A Tunisian man suffered serious burns and a British woman lost an eye, local media reported. The British Embassy in Madrid confirmed a British woman was injured.
"If things had happened differently, we could be mourning the deaths of many innocent people, which shows again ... ETA's ... brutality, savageness and total lack of respect for people's lives," Interior Minister Mariano Rajoy said.
A senior Science and Technology Ministry official appeared to have been the target but escaped with only minor cuts after suspected ETA members mistimed the remote-controlled explosion as his car passed, an Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Police said they had arrested a man and a woman suspected of carrying out the attack and who were in possession of explosives, a pistol, wigs and false identity cards.
Madrid Mayor Jose Maria Alvarez del Manzano paid tribute to the extraordinary contribution of a local man who spotted the suspects and followed them in his car before tipping off police.
The attack was the first blamed on ETA since the IRA began to disarm last month as part of the peace process and which prompted Spanish politicians to call on ETA to follow suit.
But ETA, seeking a Basque state in northern Spain and southwestern France, has stuck to its demand for self-determination.
ETA has killed around 800 people since 1968, 35 of them since it ended a 14-month ceasefire in December 1999.